Book Finder

Eleven short stories written by well-known young adult authors explore issues of self-identity and race relations. Young adults will recognize their own worlds in these thought-provoking stories that range from heartrending to cheerful.

A class takes a field trip to a museum that houses facsimiles of monsters like Count Dracula, Bigfoot, poltergeists, Medusa, mummies, zombies, werewolves, and The Blob. As their tour continues, one does wonder if the creatures are really replicas or are in fact quite real. Black-lined illustrations add detail, a bit of monster background and comedy.

Amelia Earhart was a fiesty 11-year-old when she saw her first air show. Little did she know that a passing fancy for airplanes would develop into a full-throttled passion. As a committed social worker, feminist and record-breaking female pilot, Amelia’s disappearance while flying over the South Pacific remains one of our greatest mysteries.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, led the nation through its darkest hour — the Civil War. Find out about Lincoln’s childhood on a frontier farm, how a struggling small town lawyer became president, and why he is one of America’s most revered and beloved leaders.

Barbie just might be the most famous doll in the world. She’s represented fifty different nationalities. She’s stepped into the always-fashionable shoes of more than one hundred careers. She has been played with, studied, celebrated, and vilified for more than fifty years. And she has unquestionably influenced generations of girls — whether that influence has been positive or negative depends on who you ask.

As in others in the series, lucid text combines with period photographs to present an overview of the life of the woman of Little House on the Prairie fame.

A tollbooth appears in bored Milo’s room beginning an adventure that has delighted readers since it was first published in 1961. Clever wordplay and double entendre has made this a book that can be read again and again with delight and discovery.

In the first book of The Missing series, 13-year-olds friends Jonah and Chip land in the middle of mystery involving the FBI, smugglers, and people who vanish at will. Opposing forces are struggling over Jonah and Chip’s lives and they may not have any choice in the matter.

Teen TV star Lindsay Scott has a nervous breakdown and disappears from the public eye. Is her Dad holding her captive, or is something ever weirder going on?

When a diphtheria epidemic hits her 1840 village, 13-year-old Jessie discovers it is actually a 1995 tourist site under unseen observation by heartless scientists, and it’s up to Jessie to escape the village and save the lives of the dying children.

In this companion book to Palace of Mirrors, 15-year-old Ella finds that accepting Prince Charming’s proposal ensnares her in a suffocating tangle of palace rules and royal etiquette, so she plots to escape.

After their father’s sudden death eight years ago, Chuck and Lori’s mother left them with their grandparents while she traveled for work. Now she’s try to reconnect with them and it’s not going great. Can the walls built up over the years come down and what happens when all the secrets are revealed?

In the first book of the Shadow Children series about a futuristic dystopia where only two children per family are allowed, readers meet Luke, a third child forbidden by the Population Police.

It’s the first day of school for Dexter and he’s already mad at everyone in the building. When his teacher tells the class to write a story, Dexter writes about how tough he is — and how he’s already gotten into a fight. Is any of Dexter’s story true?

Amy and Dan continue their search for the 39 Clues, uncovering amazing mysteries and secrets along the way.

Young Neftali cannot resist the power of words and the world around him. Whether he is studying the iridescent wings of beetle or imagining the story of a lone boot left in the mud, there is no limit to where his imagination and words will take him. Neftali grows up to become one of the world’s most beloved poets: Chile’s Nobel-winning laureate Pablo Neruda. Through this stunning novel, Pam Muñoz Ryan imagines poet’s childhood and triumph in overcoming a tyrannical father to believe in his own voice and words.

“Young Quebrado’s name means ‘the broken one,’ a child ‘of two shattered worlds.’ The son of a Taíno Indian mother and a Spanish father, he is taken in 1510 from his village on the island that is present-day Cuba and enslaved on a pirate’s ship, where a brutal conquistador, responsible for thousands of deaths throughout the Americas, is held captive for ransom. When a hurricane destroys the boat, Quebrado is pulled from the water by a fisherman, Naridó, whose village welcomes him, but escape from the past proves nearly impossible.” — Gillian Engberg, Booklist